How Secure Is Biden’s Lead?

The drumbeat of polls showing Biden with a big lead over Trump is unrelenting. The RealClear Politics poll (actually an average of many different polls; a good statistical technique) shows Biden with an 8.6-point lead over Trump (49.3% for Biden versus 40.7% for Trump).

Of course, national polls don’t mean much because the U.S. does not have national elections, we have state-by-state votes for Electoral College electors.

But a lead of over 8-points is significant; even adjusting for skew and other biases, that puts Biden firmly in the lead. At the level of swing states (where it really does matter), Biden also dominates. His lead is 6-points in Wisconsin, 6.4-points in Florida, and 7-points in Pennsylvania.

That last number is critical. It’s hard to see how Trump retains the White House if he does not win Pennsylvania. So, is it all over but the shouting? Should we just hand the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to Joe Biden?

I’ll reveal the answer shortly. But first let’s look at the bigger picture…

There has never been any mystery about the Republican nominee for president — it’s Donald Trump, case closed. But the identity of the Democratic nominee was contested between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders during the primary season as other contenders dropped out one by one.

Finally Sanders stepped aside and Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, although curiously, Biden never did win a simple majority of the delegates — the nominating process and primaries were brushed aside by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But no one cared because the competition dropped out and released their delegates to support Biden. Now, the world awaits Biden’s decision on who his Vice Presidential candidate will be.

An announcement is expected in a few days.

The candidate will definitely be a woman (Biden pre-announced this), but the identity is still unknown. Elizabeth Warren appears to be the frontrunner, and she would be acceptable to the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, which seems to be calling the shots.

But whoever it is, the VP pick will probably be president within a year if Biden wins. That’s because Biden’s cognitive impairment will render him unfit for office early in his administration. Biden is already surrounded by Sanders’s handlers. Some Obama retreads will make up the Biden cabinet.

Under the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution a majority of the cabinet and the VP can declare the president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office.” In that case, the Vice President becomes Acting President.

At that point, the takeover of the White House by the radical wing of the party will be complete. It’s already well underway…

For example, the Democratic primary election was recently held in New York’s 16th Congressional District. Challenger Jamaal Brown defeated incumbent Representative Eliot Engel in a close race.

The district is safe for Democrats, so Jamaal Brown will likely be elected to Congress in November to replace Engel. The initial reaction of most readers might be, “Who cares?” If you don’t live in that district, you’re not directly affected, and even if you do live there, you’re just swapping one liberal Democrat for another so what’s the big deal?

Actually, it’s a highly significant development. Here’s why:

Engle was not just another member of Congress. He had been in power for 32-years and was Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Engle was not in the running for House Majority Leader or Speaker, but he was definitely in the leadership ranks and was one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington.

Normally, when either party has a long-time incumbent in a safe seat, you just put that seat in your pocket and spend time and effort on other races where you can flip a seat from the other party or defend an endangered incumbent.

Why the challenge for Engel?

The answer is that Jamaal Brown is a radical progressive and will fit in nicely with “The Squad” of radicals led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). By the way, AOC got her seat in New York’s 14th District in 2018 by defeating another long-time incumbent, Joe Crowley, who had been in Congress for twenty years and was being mentioned as a possible Speaker of the House.

What’s happening is that Democrats in safe seats are not being challenged by Republicans but are being challenged in primary elections by radicals in their own party.

These challenges are funded by far-left groups such as the George Soros’s Open Society Foundation (through hundreds of sub-accounts) and other outside money. This serves a dual purpose.

When the radicals win, the ranks of The Squad are expanded and AOC’s power grows. Even where no challenge is underway, regular Democrats kowtow to Soros and The Squad to avoid attracting primary opponents themselves.

So, whether by direct challenge or passive subservience, the radicals are taking over the Democratic Party from the inside and The Squad’s agenda is becoming the Party’s agenda.

Keep an eye on these internal party challenges. Once the radicals have enough power they will come for your portfolio in the form of tax increases, regulatory burdens and social justice agendas.

But getting back to Biden’s solid lead in polling, should we just cede the election to him — and his VP candidate who’d probably be in power within a year?

Not so fast. For over 80 years, pollsters have asked two key questions in election polling. The first is, “Who are you voting for?”

That’s the intention question. The second question is, “Who do you expect to win?” That’s the expectation question.

The answer to the intention question gets all the headlines. Those are the polling results we describe above. The answer to the expectation question gets buried and is scarcely discussed.

But guess what? In cases where the intention and expectation questions have different answers, (in effect, “I’m voting for A, but I expect B to win”), the expectation answer had the correct result 78% of the time.

The intention question had the correct result only 22% of the time.

And, Trump is leading the expectation question right now 55% to 45% for Biden. So, Trump actually is ahead in the polls. You just have to be looking at the right polls. That’s key. So don’t write Trump off just yet.

But let’s say for now that Biden does win. Does that mean that the riots we’ve been seeing across the country would end?

It would be nice to think that the violence would wind down. But that probably won’t be the case. It’s true that there is less violence now than in early June. That’s partly due to Biden signing on to the radical agenda and his big lead in the polls.

The radicals see that they may get what they want (including a radical VP selection) and reason that there’s no need for violence if they can advance their agenda through a Biden White House.

But that’s at best a truce. If Biden wins, the demands will ratchet up. They always do when you’re dealing with ideologues and revolutionaries.

If Trump wins, the radicals will conclude they have nothing left to lose (and won’t wait four more years) and will unleash a new wave of violence almost immediately.

The Trump-bashing has been a steady, never-ending 24/7 spectacle for the past four years. There’s no reason why the media, the Resistance and the Democrats in Congress can’t keep it up for another four years.

The Antifa crowd will use a Trump victory as evidence that “democracy doesn’t work,” which will validate their violent tactics at least in their own minds. They’ll find plenty of supporters.

Either way, there’s more violence on the way. It might not be as immediate if Biden wins, but it would still follow.

Are markets ready for this? Is your portfolio ready? Investors should get ready; the chaos is not ending anytime soon, regardless of the election’s outcome.

Physical gold bullion is a good way to preserve your wealth and profit as it all unfolds.

Regards,

Jim Rickards
for The Daily Reckoning